It’s the start of a holiday weekend, and everyone – well, everyone except those slaving away to produce a daily newspaper – is taking a few days off. And that includes cable TV network programming executives. What better way to lazily fill a day of airtime than with a series marathon? There are a bunch of them this weekend, and here’s a quick look at some of the highlights:

Saturday

– Discovery Channel is tag-teaming “American Loggers” (oooh, watch them rape the planet!) from 1 p.m. to 6, and then the always awesome “Mythbusters” takes over from 6 p.m. until noon Sunday.

– MSNBC has a day full of its shamefully engrossing prison doc “Lockup” starting at noon and running into the wee hours of Sunday morning.

– TV Land is doing a day of “Married With Children” from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. All these years later, I still hate that show.

– USA is all about “House” from 9 a.m. to midnight. I hear characters are welcome.

– VH1 has “I Love the New Millennium” from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Those are always good if you’re bored and flipping channels and want something nice and disposable while you have 10 minutes to kill.

Sunday

– Animal Planet has a day of extreme angling with “River Monsters” from 2 p.m. to 5 a.m. And no, they’re not real monsters. Just piranhas and giant catfish and stuff like that.

– Discovery Channel has its very cool “Planet Earth” docu-series from 1 p.m. until 3 a.m. Totally worth watching if you have HD.

– Discovery Health has a day full of bloodied, mangled bodies with “Trauma: Life in the ER” from noon until 4 a.m.

– Spike TV is airing the greatest miniseries ever made, “Band of Brothers,” from 3 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. That’s only like six episodes, so watch out, it’ll leave you hanging.

– As if real-life sex crimes aren’t horrific enough, USA has a day of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” from 9 a.m. until 4 a.m. How much you wanna bet next season they’ll have a new episode about a girl kidnapped and held as a sex slave for 18 years?

Monday

– Discovery Channel has a day of “Dirty Jobs” from 9 a.m. until 3 a.m. Tuesday. That’s a whole lot of raw sewage to wade through.

– Food Network has its watered-down “Top Chef” ripoff “Chopped” from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. I guess that’s more of a half marathon.

– History Channel gets bloody with a day of “Gangland” from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

– MTV has its safe-sex scare-fest, “16 and Pregnant,” from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m.

– Spike TV has a full day of “Band of Brothers” from 10 a.m. to midnight. That’s the miniseries’ entire run, at least.

– SyFy gets spooky with “Ghost Hunters” from 8 a.m to 7 p.m.

– TBS has “The Office” from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. for those who are starting to miss their cubicle.

– Travel Channel has a day of Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., capped by a new episode at 10 p.m. This will be my default channel for the day.

Oh, there’s other stuff too. “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader,”“Beverly Hillbillies,” “Dance Your Ass Off,” and a ton more, but I trust you’re a discerning reader/viewer with a smidgen of taste, so I skipped the stupid ones. You’re welcome.

About This Blog

Greetings fellow television fans, fanatics, addicts and enthusiasts; welcome to our blog about TV for the Press Democrat Online. Together we will keep up with what’s coming up, examine new and existing programs in depth and from time to time take a moment to appreciate programs from the past. In addition, we’ll delve into the deep corners of Netflix and Hulu to recommend shows from around the world. My hope is together we will find enough quality programming to fill our TV viewing schedules and never again utter the words, “All these channels and nothing to watch!”
– Wallace Poulter